Kuwait may write Arab Spring's next chapter

Paul McGeough

WASHINGTON: The Kuwaiti regime, searching for a circuit breaker after weeks of exhibiting the same reflexive fears as its Gulf neighbours, has authorised a protest march for Friday - the day before contentious parliamentary elections.

The oil-rich emirate is hailed as a bastion of relative freedom in the region - Freedom House rates it as ''partly free'', scoring it at 4.5 on a scale of seven for the worst offenders. But in the face of rising unrest, Kuwait's ruler, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, has tightened his grip - banning gatherings of more than 20 people and breaking up protests with tear gas and smoke bombs, injuring about 30 in one run-in last month.

But even worse in the eyes of a broadly-based protest movement that is urging a boycott of the poll, the emir has unilaterally rewritten the emirate's complex electoral rules before Saturday's vote, in what critics claim is a bid to rein in an opposition that won 35 of the 50 parliamentary seats at elections early this year.

The degree to which the boycott succeeds will be a measure of the Gulf monarchies success in fending off the Arab Spring - either, as in Saudi Arabia, by extravagant cash payments; in Bahrain, by savage crackdowns; or in Kuwait, a middle course of cash grants, food coupons and acceptance of a degree of protest.

The protest movement, comprising youth groups, former MP and Islamist movements, has stopped short of urging an Arab Spring-type revolution.

But it is demanding reforms that would make Kuwait more inclusive and accountable - such as cabinet appointees being elected and for the pool from which senior public officials are appointed be wider than the royal family. Under the watchful gaze of unelected regimes in neighbouring Riyadh and Manama, where the Saudi-assisted crackdown on protests has been significantly harsher than in Kuwait, al-Sabah has defended his actions as necessary to protect Kuwait's ''security and stability''.

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The Kuwaiti royals have tolerated dissent, designating a formal protest area near the parliament where MPs go through the motions of debating legislation and quizzing government ministers. But this democratic veneer is thin - political parties are not allowed and, the unelected emir has a veto over any decisions by the parliament, which he can, and does dissolve as he pleases.

The result is dysfunction and gridlock, most notably stalling finalisation of a huge development and infrastructure plan estimated to be worth more than $US100 billion ($96 billion).

The opposition leader Musallam al-Barrak, who was jailed for 10 days last month for insulting the royals, said in The Guardian earlier this week that the Kuwaiti constitution enshrined a right for the people to ''impose [their] opinions on the emir''.

He writes: ''The current struggle is therefore a struggle for power. Is power - as stated in the constitution - for the public; or is it - contrary to the constitution - for the emir?

''People do not dispute the al-Sabah family's right to the presidency, but the al-Sabah family is disputing the people's right to manage the state and its wealth. In the end the people of Kuwait will be triumphant.''

The risk in this for the royals is getting the result they want by rewriting the voting rules.

Until now, almost two years into the Arab Spring, they have been able to fend off demands for reform, by allowing opposition MPs to speak their mind in the parliament and for their supporters to rah-rah in the next-door protest zone.

A clampdown on the right to protest and the election of an even more cartoonish parliament could risk the ire of the street and a real push for the Kuwait chapter of the Arab Spring.